UK HIFI SHOW LIVE 2023 SHOW REPORT, PART 2, FROM ERIC VAN SPELDE

The second part of Eric’s report from the UK HiFi Show Live 2023 at Ascot.

Sound Design Distribution presented the Alta Audio Alyssa and Alec speakers from the USA, which are hardly known here but seem to have a strong presence in the magazines of their homeland, the US of A. The Alyssa is a standmount, and the Alec is a medium-sized floorstander; both are two-way systems using ribbon tweeters. Both pairs were taking turns on the end of a system that included a Consonance Wax Engine turntable with Charisma Audio Eco MC cartridge, Grimm Audio MU1 music server, a Mola-Mola preamp, a Lumin P1 network player, and a whopping big Halcro Eclipse Stereo power amplifier. A rather diverse bunch if you consider price, size, origins, and ambition levels – but it all hung together remarkably well. This was another very pleasant room to be in.

A familiar face in unexpected surroundings – yes, it was indeed Mario Binner of Audio Note UK working the CD player; Audio Note, of course, a CD 4.1x to be precise – at Roger´s room. Some LS 5/9s were being driven by the E20/a II 6L6 push-pull valve amplifier, a revival and upgrade from the E20a that was introduced in the 1990s. Audio Note UK did have a hand in the original design, and its chief designer Andy Grove reworked it for the 2020s – closing the circle. A pair of LS3/5As sitting on the AB-1 ´column´ subwoofers was also present. The resulting sound combined the best of both brands – very natural, even-handed, with dynamics that belied the amplifier´s modest power rating.

Cambridge demoed a small ´lifestyle´ system with their Evo 75 all-in-one streaming amplifier driving KEF speakers rather than their own Evo S. A new CD transport in the same design rounded off the package; a good move as many of us still own hundreds of silver discs and good, dedicated transports are getting scarcer by the day – the innards of this one are bespoke rather than a repacking of some generic DVD transport. Another new item was the Dacmagic 200M, the last in a long line of compact, versatile, and affordable D/A converters.

Avid Hifi demoed a ´source first´ system, playing their Acutus Reference turntable with a huge power supply unit (that of the Reference Mono is even bigger, though) through an Integra integrated amp, driving their ´entry level´ Evo 4 speakers. It was a relatively modest presence relative to former outings where head honcho Conrad Mas would offer ´good-better-best´ comparison demos with three levels of turntable running the same cartridge, and at least on the press day, the personnel seemed to be on a bit of a downer about the lack of traffic (´I´m not really enjoying this, frankly´). Blondie´s debut LP sounded about as good as it could be on the system, though.

Boyer Audio´s room was pretty much the definition of what you expect a high-end system to be – as you’d hope for, given the sheer quality of the cast. Kroma Audio Stella Extreme speakers (a snip at 29,500 pounds, relatively speaking) were driven by Engström Lars monoblock power amps (63,500 GBP), Monica preamplifier (49,500 GBP) and M-Phono phonostage (23,000 GBP), fronted by a Brinkmann Balance turntable and a Wadax digital set up consisting of six huge boxes that took up all the shelf space on a double audio rack… Clean power was being delivered courtesy of Shunyata Research. Depeche Mode´s ´Stripped´ sounded glorious from vinyl and as a bonus, both Timo Engstrom (of er, Engstrom) and Miguel Carvalho of Kroma Atelier were present, introducing their gear to the listener and very much up for a nice chat in between.

The Chord Company bucked the trend of the show by going for that other American high end speaker powerhouse to give their electronics a voice. Magico A3s were sitting pretty at the business end of a system consisting of a Dave DAC (GBP 10,500), Hugo M upscaling device (3,500), Ultima Pre 3 preamp (6,000) and a pair of 480W Ultima 3 monoblock power amps (11,500 each).

Now this was tremendous fun. A fairly new operation, Stratton Acoustic decided to go for something entirely different than the usual big column enclosure, small drivers high-end speakers, something that would concentrate on the music experience rather than specifications – and boy, did they deliver. The Stratton Acoustics Elypsis 1512 looks like a thoroughly modernised version of classic JBL monitors from the ´70s – wardrobe-sized, oblong cabinets, each sporting a pair of 15-inch woofers, a 12-inch bass/midrange, and a high-frequency unit in an almost dinner-plater sized waveguide which can be placed on either the left or the right. On the other end is the crossover for midrange and highs, in a bespoke CNC-machined enclosure (the crossover for the bass units is on the floor of the cabinets because it´s too heavy. These are no throwback when it comes to accuracy, noise floor, and transparency – they throw a Cinemascope-sized soundstage, but I was also impressed by how well one could separate the double bass sequencer (being one-sixteenth of a note apart on left and right channels) on Donna Summer´s ´I Feel Love´. As you would expect, these energised the room with utter effortlessness, but they also remained controlled throughout. I couldn´t resist the urge to play ´LFO` rather loudly via the Innuos server – despite the conservative rating of a 28 Hz -6dB point, the bass shook the room… Good thing they cost from 69,500 pounds upwards (bespoke options are available) and realistically don´t fit anywhere in our apartment (heck, my Avantgarde Duos were a tight squeeze…) – otherwise I´d be sorely tempted. 

Karma AV occupied three rooms at the show, one being dedicated to Mo-Fi Electronics who showed off their new Master Deck turntable and matching Master Phono phono stage, with a BAT tube amp driving the SourcePoint 8, according to Steve Shade from MoFi essentially the drive unit from its bigger SourcePoint 10 sibling, only with less cone surface and everything else scaled down to about 80% – makes sense, that. And while the Master Deck isn´t exactly cheap at 7,000 pounds, it borrows the technology from the former Spiral Groove turntable pretty much wholesale, and that was more like 25 grand – so looking at it that way, it should be a stone-cold bargain… The phono stage features just about every feature for adapting to the cartridge and has a pair of VU meters which not only add visual interest but are useful for choosing the right amount of gain, I´d think…

In the next Karma AV room, the System Audio Silverback all-in-one wireless speakers were playing. When entering the room, you´d have thought that the black, larger Silverback 40.2 floorstanders were on duty – but it were in effect the tiny Silverback 1 on-wall speakers, fresh from receiving an EISA award just like its larger sibling. Can´t argue with that, really…

Last but not least, the third – and largest – Karma AV room was home to Perlisten and Primare, who set up three systems – a ´top of the line´ one with two pairs of Primare monoblocks pumping up to 1,400 Watt into the limited edition Perlisten S7t speakers (oooh, carbon fibre!) in a bi-amp configuration, a somewhat more modest system where an 8-channel amp was bridged into four channels to do pretty much the same – only with ´just´ 800 Watts, and an all-singing multichannel system based on the new Primare SPA 25 AV receiver.  

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Part 3 to follow!

Read part 1 of the report here…

Eric van Spelde

For all the UK HiFi Show Live 2023 coverage from Ascot, click here